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An Eco-Hotel For London's New Left Bank
Watch out Paris! You may be all smug with your Left Bank but you have a pretender to your throne. London is about to get its own Left Bank.
Ok, so maybe the French shouldn’t be doing any boot-quivering yet. Because the London’s Left Bank is currently under construction, and is going to be tucked away in Battersea, in south-west London. And last time we were in Battersea, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. At all.
Still, the new Hotel Rafayel on the Left Bank is hoping to up the vibe, and it sounds pretty nice. Opening in December, it’s going to be a five star hotel complete with bakery, champagne bar and Thameside restaurant. So far, so yawn – except this is going to be an eco hotel with rain-water harvesting system, energy-efficient air con and low energy lighting. Which doesn’t sound that impressive, until they say that the carbon footprint of each hotel room will be a whopping 75% less than the London average.
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The Avatar Hotel: A New Geek Hotel in Silicon Valley for $99 a Night
You don’t have to be a “Second Life” fanboy to take advantage of the Avatar Hotel’s $99 opening rate. Joie De Vivre’s sixth Silicon Valley property is opening in a former Holiday Inn this month with 168 rooms, and claims to be the only boutique hotel in Santa Clara. For you non-geeks, Santa Clara is home to Yahoo!, Cisco, Intel, Sun Microsystems, and McAfee.
The hotel is targeted toward “tech road warriors,” with a network of techie amenities “designed to appeal to start-up entrepreneurs as well as established technology gurus.” Rooms come with complimentary wired and wireless internet access, laptop tables for working in bed, iPod docking stations and 37-inch flat screens.
There’s also a new fitness center, a heated outdoor pool and Jacuzzi (only open April-October), and what just might be the most awesome free hotel food event we’ve come across lately: Wednesday night “Beer & Brats” barbecues with free microbrews and hot dogs for guests from 7:00-9:00pm.
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Design Hotels Releases Its Own Geek Hotels List
The good folks at Design Hotels have put out yet another of their special list, this time focusing on international high-tech hotel rooms. Three of these futuristic hotels are in Mexico and most of the rest are scattered throughout Europe. All told the list has 11 different cutting edge hotels from three continents, plus more elaborate descriptions behind each entry.
Some of the hotels don't seem so much technologically saturated as just sleek and painted white (hey, it works for Apple!). But other options involve all kinds of crazy high-tech amenities, from absurdly slick TVs to Xbox 360s. We don't think we're giving away any secrets when we assure you that iPods also figure heavily. We'll go over some of the list's highlights, then send you to Design Hotels for the full list.
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New Houston Hotel Introduces Bluetooth Stereo in Guestrooms
Hey there tech geeks: next time you find yourself in need of a hotel room in Houston, consider spending the night at the Hotel Sorella which will open on August 16. That's because the hotel promises to have a plug panel that includes bluetooth stereo for guests in-room--meaning they can play music from their iPhones or other Bluetooth-enabled devices through the rooms's TV speakers.
We got the tip from someone who works for the plug panel technology. Here's how it all went down:
I work for a hotel technology supplier and we are installing our first MediaHub panel with stereo Bluetooth at the Hotel Sorella in Houston. I know I've seen a few people chatting about plug panels. The new one going into the Hotel Sorella has a stereo Bluetooth interface so guests can stream music or any other audio through the TV speakers by using Bluetooth - no wires or cables. The catch: you have to pair an A2DP enabled device or one that will work with wireless speakers (not just a Bluetooth headset).
Ok, so what the heck is an A2DP enabled device and how do you know if you have one? Well if you have the iPhone 3G, that will definitely work here. A lot of Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson phones will work with this, as will Palm TREOs. Unfortunately, your first, second, or third generation iPod will not work with this feature. Still, you can just plug it into the panel.
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Best Geek Hotels in 2009
As we near the end of the first decade of this new millennium, we are tempted to reflect on just how far technology has come since the panic days of Y2K back in the late nineties. The Newton is dead; long live the iPhone. Geocities beget Friendster beget MySpace beget Facebook. And of course, everyone is adding a "tw" prefix to absolutely everything.
What hasn't changed in ten plus years is the fact that the hotel industry has done its best to keep up with the latest technological advances, upgrading rooms with flat-screen TVs, offering guests gaming systems like the Wii or the Playstation in-room or poolside and, in some very awesome cases, placing iMacs in the guest rooms.
Without further ado, here are our annual picks for Best Geek Hotels in 2009. This year, each list entry has its own video tour, hand-crafted by HotelChatter editors and contributors. Enjoy.
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Accor Unveils Futuristic, Gadget-Heavy Hotel Room in Paris
Hotel technology doesn't get much better than a hotel room that you can open using your cell phone, does it? Well, it sure turns us on and it's already a reality at the Pullman Paris Bercy, an Accor hotel that serves as a home-base for testing rooms from the chain's Innovation and Design unit.
You can actually book the test rooms or you might just be lucky to end up in one. As well as cell phone key technology (so far it only works from Samsung phones), there is a high tech shower with glass that turns from clear to opaque at the flick of a switch as well as having different lighting options while you're washing.
As you'd expect, all the gadgets are connected to a single remote control, which means you can fiddle with the bedroom and shower lights, lightproof blinds, TV and video projector without moving more than a couple of fingers.
The Pullman Bercy is aimed at business travelers but curious hotel tech observers are no doubt dropping by as well. Rates for a double start from around €170 ($225).
[Photo: kevin2102]
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How to Avoid Paying for Multiple WiFi Connections in One Room
Paying separately to connect multiple computers in our room to the WiFi network makes us want to do this.
When your Internet-dependent self is traveling with an Internet-dependent companion or two, there is absolutely nothing worse than realizing that a) you're in a hotel that charges for WiFi and b) you're in a hotel that charges every computer in your room that connects to the Internet for WiFi. The worst.
While we fancy ourselves hotel gurus who happen to know our way around the Internet, we would not call ourselves "tech experts." Not at all. And while we would normally occupy ourselves by complaining about the WiFi charges, it has come to our attention that there is a way around this fee-per-computer charge. Yes, if you play your techie cards right, you can usually turn your own Macbook into a WiFi hotspot that your traveling companions can connect to — thereby avoiding forking over cash for every laptop you connect to the hotel's network.
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We Call The Window Seat in Costa Verde's 727 Fuselage Suite
Last week, we were a little skeptical about the monkeys on-site at the Costa Verde Hotel, largely because we're afraid they are going to ruin our pool time. But as we dug a little deeper on the Costa Verde website, we found this totally awesome hotel suite perfect for the LOST fan in you.
The hotel's 727 Fuselage Suite has been created from 1965 Boeing 727 fuselage, which previously belonged to South Africa Air and Avianca Airlines, to offer guests two-bedrooms, two private baths, a flat screen TV, a kitchenette, a dining area foyer, an ocean view terrace, a private entrance up a river rock, spiral staircase and 360 degrees of the surrounding gardens.
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Begin Your Download at Holiday Inn Express Internet City
When we discovered there was a Holiday Inn Express Dubai Internet City, we thought the hotel chain was just using a clever gimmick to draw in guests. But no, there actually is a real place called Dubai Internet City. According to its website:
Dubai Internet City is a strategic base for companies targeting emerging markets in a vast region extending from the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent, and Africa to the CIS countries, covering 2 billion people with GDP $ 6.7 trillion.
Ok, so that's a little too much business and geek-speak for us to understand but naturally all these companies heading to Dubai Internet City are going to need a place to stay. In comes the Holiday Inn Express.
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Hyatt Place Has a Place For All Your Geeky Goodies
Hyatt Place is quickly becoming one of our new fave chains for budget business travel excursions. Yesterday, our brothers at Jaunted did a bang-up job of reporting their check-in to check-out experience during their very first Hyatt Place visit — and being the tech-dependent gadget goobers that we are, we zeroed in on this: the glorious panel of tech goodies.
Four easy buttons allow us to toggle between the TV, component, video, and computer inputs — and there's a plug for anything we might be able to stuff into our laptop case to bring along with us. That means presentation prep would be a breeze, but switching back to the telly to catch the latest ep of Lost would not require calling the front desk (or any missed shirtless-man scenes).
The only gripe: shouldn't there be an Ethernet plug in here somewhere? Jaunted mentioned the WiFi at this particular Hyatt Place was a little bit sluggish (though it was free!), and we've had experiences where the WiFi was out completely and there was no wired Internet access in the rooms (we're looking at you, Marriott Courtyard) — there is something to be said for keepin' the old school alternative on standby in case the WiFi craps out.
[Photo: KBFinFan]
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Is Pop Century the Best of the Disney Pack, Man?
We've stayed at the likes of Gleneagles, as well as a fabulous little hostel in Tarifa, but no hotel has managed to provide us with as much fun as a stay at a Disney World resort.
While we haven't stayed here ourselves, it seems from TripAdvisor reviews that there's few better places to stay in Orlando than at Pop Century Resort, which is sort of like I Love The 80's (and in the case of some rooms, 90's) in hotel form.
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Is Facial-Recognition Technology in Hotels the Next Big Thing?
According to TechDirt, there are apparently people out there who think that facial-recognition technology is something hotels may start buying into. So far, the technology has been used primarily for law enforcement and surveillance (or at least it's been marketed for those uses), but now vendors are starting to pitch the systems to the hospitality industry. The idea, essentially, is "that the roughly $30,000 system can help hotels recognize repeat customers" — but unfortunately, it's only 80-90% effective, and that's only when people "move through a chokepoint facing the camera - ideally looking up into it and well lit."
We don't really have to tell you why this is not a good idea, but we'll go ahead and tell you anyway: number one, as TechDirt pointed out, why bring in a piece of technology to do what your staffers should be doing as, um, part of their job? If hotels are truly gunning to make their frequent, "valued" customers feel special, shouldn't managers make it a priority to train their employees to recognize and acknowledge those guests who regularly stay at a single property?
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